{"id":4068,"date":"2012-03-20T18:46:15","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T22:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4068"},"modified":"2012-03-20T18:51:12","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T22:51:12","slug":"nats-seem-set-to-sputter-out-of-the-gate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4068","title":{"rendered":"Nats seem set to sputter out of the gate"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Morse's injury is starting to really concern me. Photo Jacqueline Martin\/AP via federalbaseball.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Because it seems like half the team is nursing a strain<\/a> or an injury<\/a> or a cold<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can’t get ready for a 162-game season if you’re not getting ABs<\/a>.\u00a0 Michael Morse<\/strong> has a grand total of 7 ABs this spring.\u00a0 Adam LaRoche<\/strong>?\u00a0 8 Abs.\u00a0 Rick Ankiel<\/strong>?\u00a0 6.\u00a0 That’s a big chunk of the presumed starting lineup for this team.\u00a0\u00a0 Chien-Ming Wang<\/strong> probably will start the season on the DL as a precaution after straining a hamstring; good thing we havn’t traded John Lannan<\/strong> yet.\u00a0 Now we hear that Drew Storen<\/strong> has a cold.\u00a0 He’s only got 2 IP all spring!<\/p>\n

Of course we’ve gotten plenty of at bats for Ian Desmond<\/strong> to show us that he’s learned little from his late season improvements; he’s hitting .200 for the spring.<\/p>\n

On the bright side, the rest of the rotation seems to be doing ok.\u00a0 You never want to over-analyze spring training stats<\/a>; players may go out one inning and work entirely on spotting their change up on the outside corner, not caring what the hitters do to the ball.\u00a0 If a hitter knows the same pitch is coming 4-5 times in a row, he’s gonna put a charge into it.\u00a0 Of course, that being said Gio Gonzalez<\/strong> has looked exceptional this spring, flashing more speed than had been previously reported and is pitching to a 1.42 era clip.<\/p>\n

And, the Nats do open up with two of the weaker teams in the league.\u00a0 They could very well take 2 of 3 from both Chicago and the Mets to come home 4-2 no matter who is batting.<\/p>\n

Are you worried\u00a0 yet?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why? Because it seems like half the team is nursing a strain or an injury or a cold. You can’t get ready for a 162-game season if you’re not getting ABs.\u00a0 Michael Morse has a grand total of 7 ABs this spring.\u00a0 Adam LaRoche?\u00a0 8 Abs.\u00a0 Rick Ankiel?\u00a0 6.\u00a0 That’s a big chunk of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[184,37,52,385,114,136,179],"class_list":["post-4068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-laroche","tag-chien-ming-wang","tag-drew-storen","tag-gio-gonzalez","tag-ian-desmond","tag-michael-morse","tag-rick-ankiel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4068"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4072,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068\/revisions\/4072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}